


Ladybug, Chat Noir, Unify

by Word_Devourer



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Drifting, F/M, It's like fusion but more Pacific Rim, Mind Meld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:34:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29890857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Word_Devourer/pseuds/Word_Devourer
Summary: In the depths of the grimoire, Ladybug has finally decoded something that might help them find Hawkmoth.  Like every technique using both of the most powerful Miraculouses, it comes with its risks.  Perhaps most dangerous of all, it allows for no secrets to be kept.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 5
Kudos: 68





	Ladybug, Chat Noir, Unify

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, thank you for asking, this *is* a fic designed with entire premise of making these two nerds drift like in Pacific Rim.
> 
> Inspired by a prompt on the Three Sentence Ficathon, that I didn't feel I could do justice in three sentences.  
> For someone who *did* decide to take up the challenge, and did it in three sentences, go see AlexSeanchai's fic, with 100% less direct brain melding, and 100% more Pacific-Rim-getting-in-the-ring-together-and-having-each-other's-back-in-a-fight.  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/16984017

Ladybug set the stack of papers down on a table that used to be Master Fu’s with a _thunk_.

“It’s all here,” she said, “it was all right here, and we missed it the whole time.”

“You keep saying that,” said Chat, “but you keep not explaining. _What_ was here?”

She paused, took a breath.

“Sorry, I’m… I’m tired. I couldn’t sleep last night. I was… I was trying to decide whether this was a bad idea or not…”

He pushed away from the wall.

“Well, I’m all ears.”

“Right!” she said, perking up. “I was digging through the back half of the book, and…” She shuffled through the printed papers, and pulled out one with an illustration.

Chat squinted, turning his head.

“A tree? With… our Miraculouses at the center?”

She nodded.

“I assumed it was going to be a… genealogy or something, where kwamis come from, which ones have split as the world changed, but… It wasn’t.”

“Okay… And what was it?”

“Well,” she said, and paused, for a long, long time. “You know… How our Miraculouses are kind of… The ones in charge? Like, creation, destruction, the ones that lead to all the others?”

He nodded. “Which is why the wishes exist.”

“Exactly, but… This is something else. This is… _Because_ they’re in charge, they’re linked to… Well, _everything,_ and _everyone_.”

“Okay. That makes sense, I guess.”

“And the tree… It means that you can use them to trace connections. You can… You can follow the lines between people. The closer they are to you, the better, but you can… You can _find_ people with it.”

Chat’s mind clicked through the thought process.

“You want to find Hawkmoth.”

She nodded.

“There’s, uh…” She shuffled through the papers, giving up after a second, “a page that _should_ mean, if I’m right, that the presence of a Miraculous should make a person stand out. Touching one, handling one, anything like that, it’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”

He nodded, slowly. “And… What’s the catch? You wouldn’t have had to think about it if it was that easy.”

She clenched her hand, looked away.

“It’s… We can’t decide _who_ we see.”

“Which means…” he said, “I’ll see… Everyone you’ve ever given a Miraculous to. I’ll know… All of their identities, which means if I get caught…”

She pursed her lips.

“You’re right, but… they, at least, don’t always have their Miraculouses.”

The penny dropped.

_“Oh.”_

She nodded.

“It’ll take both of us. The grimoire’s specific about that. One person can’t handle the load alone. And…” She looked down at the grimoire, and he got the impression that she was trying to avoid meeting his eyes. “If it goes wrong, you can… break things.”

“Break things how?”

She swallowed, and then spoke as if reciting from memory, “ _If the two are not sufficiently aligned, then their minds may be lost. The weight of the world’s connections can’t be born alone.”_ There was a long silence, and then she shrugged. “That’s the best translation I could figure out.”

“So we just… We have to be working together?” He managed a chuckle. “Milady, we’ve been doing that for years.”

“I know,” she said, and sounded almost ashamed, “it’s just… How do you measure that? They say that there’s a moment, before you even been looking around you, where it’s just the two of you, and… Even there, you can…” She gestured vaguely, “There are stories where people find things that they can’t… That don’t…”

She looked down, and Chat…

“Ladybug, I-

 _“I don’t want to hurt you,”_ she said, almost too quiet to hear.

He stopped.

He chuckled, and, as she looked up, he was shaking his head.

“Come on, Buggaboo. Even with that mask on, I know what kind of person you are. I’ve seen you on some of your worst days; there’s not gonna be anything there that makes me think any less of you.”

Her face flushed. “I wasn’t… I know, I… That wasn’t what I meant. I…” She shook her head. “I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Then don’t,” he said, “we’ve got to find Hawkmoth one way or another. I’ve taken my share of hits to get there already, just as much as you have. I want to be done with Akumas just as much as you do, so whatever you’ve got in there, I can handle it.”

And…

Of course that’s what he’d say.

She managed a smile.

“Right. You’re right, of course. I think I knew that, but… You know how I am.”

He grinned.

“I do. So. What’s the setup?”

“Well,” she said, feeling as if a weight had lifted from her mind, “it’s actually a simple one. Just an incantation you have to say, and…” She shifted the pages again, “You have to be transformed, but for it to work, the Miraculouses have to be almost touching.”

He nodded slowly, working the logistics out in his head.

“And the incantation?”

She nodded her head side to side. “Assuming I have the translation right, it should be ‘By destruction, I seek,’ and then I say, ‘By creation, I find.’”

He tilted his head as if to read the page, though it was encoded and in a language he didn’t speak, “Wait, we can just do it in French?”

“I assume?” she said, shrugging. “I mean, Cataclysm… Lucky Charm… Unify… None of _those_ words existed a thousand years ago, but they still understand them.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

And then…

“Oh,” he said, “then… yeah, I guess that means there’s nothing stopping us.”

She shook her head.

“Huh.”

“Mhm.”

“I was… I guess I was kind of expecting there was going to be some kind of huge setup we’d have to do to get it all ready, and now…”

“Yeah, I know. But you’re right, you know? Why wait?”

He swallowed heavily. “Yeah. Then I guess…” he slowly reached out.

Even with the gloves, the sensation of pressing his hand into her cheek was enough to make cheeks turn pink.

 _Keep it together; she’d be_ seeing _all this in a second._

_Oh god. What if she saw…_

He felt his heart begin to race.

_The Ladybug and Chat Noir dolls he’d bought. The time he’d spent, laying in bed, wondering if he’d ever know who she was. The…_

_She’d already turned him down so many times. And now she’d know how ineffectual his attempts to let go had been._

He was, for a moment, intensely glad that the gloves kept his palms from being obviously sweaty.

He could see the nerves on her face, too, the match of his.

“I think you go first,” she said.

“Right.”

Silence.”

“By destruction, I seek.”

“By creation, I find.”

\--

Never ripped from body before. Singularly unsettling.

Space around, empty. Center, both.

The room was still there around them, but their eyes were closed. It was a memory, a shared thought from before their eyes had shut.

His hand was still pressed to her cheek. She could feel it.

The Miraculouses they wore shone like lanterns in the dark, but underneath-

Worry, nerves, surface level emotions, matched between the two of them.

Then, memories, minutes ago.

_‘I can handle it.’_

_‘I couldn’t sleep last night._

_Last night._

_Bedroom. Warm colors. Voices downstairs. Parents watching a movie. Realizing what it meant. Shock. Excitement, realization. Laying awake. Cold room. Massive window. Plagg needed an extra piece of cheese. Lying, trying to sleep. Ladybug. Burning heat. Painful in the body, but utterly irreplaceable. Irreplaceable. He was always scared that he wasn’t living up to her. He did. He always did. So many hits he’d taken. Pain. Shame. Handing over his Miraculous to. Her returning to him, returning the ring. Plagg had been so happy. Plagg. Kwami. Tikki wasn’t like him. Always so cheerful. Always advice. “Just follow your heart, Marinette!”_

_Marinette. Everyday Ladybug. Adrien._

The names hit like a ton of bricks, and for a moment, everything stopped dead.

And then the dam cracked.

_Adrien. Schedule. Terror. Always trying to say it. Never managing to. Flowers. Chat Noir. Balcony. Another boy. Another- Adrien. The whole time, it had been him. Always so glad to see her. She’d come so far. Able to talk now. Might not have hated him. Never had. First day. Stoneheart. Lucky Charm. Cataclysm. Hawkmoth. “Whoever’s under that mask…” First day. Gum. Chair. Rain. Umbrella. Burning cheeks. Strike of lightning. Lying in bed, terrified that he’d never want to speak to her again. Watching her. Wondering. Exceptional. Surely she knew. She always said no. It was always fine. Time with her enough. Always so strong. Such a burden. Never carried alone. She was out there, always. Always there when he needed her. Light out the window. Sunlight. Wind in hair. Ladybug. Freedom. Leave everything else behind._

Had they been able to feel their bodies, they would have been shaking.

_Where did one stop?_

_Where did the other begin?_

_Unimportant._

_Together._

_Together, they could carry any burden._

**Author's Note:**

> In the next five seconds, they're gonna start looking for people, and find Hawkmoth immediately, and I'm not writing that, so, I think that's the end of it.
> 
> Although, that said, I might come back at some point, reopen it, and write a bit of the aftermath once the drift ends... If nothing else, it'll be way easier to tell who's thinking what.


End file.
